Innocence
by DezoPenguin
Summary: A widow's mother in law seeks Subaru's help in exorcizing a haunting poltergeist, despite the widow's protests that she does not seek relief from her suffering. Set early in the manga continuity.
1. Chapter 1

_AUTHOR'S NOTE: "Innocence" was the first fanfic I ever wrote, over nine years ago when I was still in college. Up until now it's only been posted to the CLAMP Fanfiction Archive (a spinoff of the CLAMP Mailing List, which I was a regular member of at that time). I thought I'd tune it up a bit (well, removing footnotes! Ugh, I was young then...) and post it here to a theoretically wider audience. I've kept the use of honorifics intact because it adds a great deal to the way _Tokyo Babylon_ characters express themselves_,_ and because if I have Hokuto running around saying, "Sei-chan" it looks absurd to leave out the honorifics towards everyone else. Oh, and it must be obvious, but I'll say it anyway: I have no idea whatsoever how the Tokyo police department is organized!_

"Subaru!"

Subaru Sumeragi, only sixteen years old and yet the thirteenth head of Japan's most respected clan of onmyouji, looked up from his seat on the playground bench.

"Hokuto-chan?"

Subaru's sister was running towards him. Despite the fact that they were boy and girl, they could easily have been taken for identical twins, an impression only emphasized by Hokuto's energetic, outgoing nature and Subaru's gentler personality. Hokuto was always chiding him for not being assertive enough, and yet it never seemed right to Subaru that he put himself forward at someone else's expense...

"Is something wrong?" he asked as Hokuto vaulted neatly over the chain-link fence surrounding the tiny park.

"Oh, Subaru, what are you doing here?" she asked. He noticed that she was wearing her latest fancy-dress creation, which appeared to be dozens of pieces of four-leaf-clover-shaped cloth sewn together, each one a different size and a different shade of green. "We've been looking all over for you!"

"I was watching the sun rise." He pointed; it was true that you could see the rosy glow of dawn cresting over a row of buildings that were just short enough to let the sun be seen before day properly began.

"Oh, how beautiful!" Hokuto exclaimed. "I didn't know there was such a place in Tokyo, so close to our apartment building!" Her green eyes sparkled with happiness.

"Tokyo is full of surprises." It was a man's voice, a warm, rich tenor, and Subaru turned his head towards where it had come from, realizing who the "we" that Hokuto had mentioned was.

"Seishiro-san!"

"Good morning, Subaru-kun."

Dr. Seishiro Sakurazuka, veterinarian, twenty-five years old, stood on the other side of the fence. He was lean, handsome, and quite a bit taller than the Sumeragis. He had a kind smile, and hid his brown eyes behind narrow glasses.

"Sei-chan stopped over to have breakfast with you, Subaru. He's such an ardent lover," Hokuto teased. "I wish I had a man who would wake up in the dark hours of the night so he could come spend the morning with me!"

"Hokuto-chan!" Subaru protested, reddening. His sister and Seishiro always teased him like that, as if the two men were destined lovers or something. That was silly, of course, since they were both male...

It was silly, wasn't it?

Subaru's gaze flicked back to Seishiro.

"Well, let's go eat then," he said, covering up his thoughts.

"Oh, that's not why we came looking for you," Hokuto said, shaking her head vigorously. "While we were waiting for you to come back, a case came in for you!" She handed Subaru a fax.

Seishiro chuckled.

"This modern age captures even onmyouji, doesn't it?"

Subaru scanned the fax as the three walked back to his apartment.

"What is it?" Hokuto asked eagerly.

Her brother looked up in surprise.

"You don't know?"

"It was a fax for you. I wouldn't...read..." She broke off under the combined weight of Seishiro's amused gaze and Subaru's exasperated stare. With a theatrical sigh, she admitted, "Oh, all right, we ran out after you before I had a chance to read it."

Seishiro suppressed a chuckle, but his eyes were laughing.

"It seems that a young woman is being haunted by a poltergeist," Subaru read.

"Poltergeist?" Hokuto tried out the unfamiliar Western word on her tongue. "What's that?"

"It's an invisible spirit that inhabits a person, or a household," explained Seishiro, displaying a knowledge of occult matters that, as always, took Subaru by surprise. He had been amazed to learn that the ordinary-seeming animal doctor also could use magic; there was surely far more to Seishiro than appeared on the surface. "It makes objects move, knocking them over, hurling them about..."

"It sounds like uncontrolled psychokinesis," Hokuto mused.

"That's one explanation people have suggested, that poltergeist effects are generated by untrained psychokinetics lashing out unconciously because of strong emotion."

"You're so smart, Sei-chan! Isn't he, Subaru?" she hinted broadly.

"Well, er..." Subaru murmured, blushing again.

"Subaru-kun is so cute when he blushes," Seishiro commented.

"Uh-huh!" Hokuto agreed, nodding.

Hokuto chattered away happily on various other topics for the rest of the walk, thankfully avoiding the subject of romance, until they reached the spot near the siblings' building where Seishiro had parked his car.

"You're not stopping in for breakfast after all, Sei-chan?"

"Subaru-kun is going to start the case right away." Seishiro turned to Subaru. "Aren't you?"

Subaru nodded.

"That's right. If someone needs my help, it would be very wrong of me to waste time over breakfast."

"Oh, Subaru, you have no pride at all," moaned Hokuto, but he could tell that she was proud of his dedication.

"Where is the case at?" Seishiro asked.

"Umm...Shinjuku," Subaru said, checking the report.

"Perfect." Seishiro smiled dazzlingly. "I'll give you a ride there. I don't have any appointments for this morning," he added, forestalling Subaru's inevitable protests, "so it will be no trouble at all."

Seishiro's expert driving got them through the crowded Tokyo streets in good time; he found the small, neat apartment building where the client lived with the kind of knowledge that only taxi drivers and local policeman usually possessed.

"I'll wait here for you," he told Subaru.

"Thank you very much, Seishiro-san."

A white-haired old woman with eyes clouded by sorrow answered Subaru's ring.

"Yes?"

"I'm Subaru Sumeragi. Are you Mrs. Kimura?"

"I am. Thank you for coming at such short notice, Mr. Sumeragi; please come in."

She showed the young onmyouji through the foyer to a Western-style combined kitchen and dining room. The elderly woman indicated a chair, and poured him bitter green tea from an automatic tea-maker.

"Machine-made tea," she said, joining Subaru at the table. "In my youth, we never even imagined such a thing. Now we have machines doing all kinds of jobs for us. Of course, your generation grew up with such things, so you must be more comfortable with them than an old lady like me."

It reminded Subaru of what Seishiro had said about the fax machine.

"Well, I suppose you didn't come here to listen to me ramble," Mrs. Kimura told him as he sipped his tea. "For a famous onmyouji to help a poor family with their problems..."

"But your problems are as important as anyone else's!" Subaru protested, genuinely distressed that the old woman would think differently.

"You are a kind boy," she told him, smiling sadly.

She looked down at her tea, then back up at Subaru.

"In any case, you are here to help my granddaughter-in-law. Poor Midori is the one being haunted."

"Your granddaughter-in-law?"

Mrs. Kimura nodded.

"My son and his wife died when my grandson was only two years old.I raised Keiji by myself...Just two months ago, he married Midori. Theywere so happy..."

She blinked away the tears welling up in her eyes.

"He died in an accident last week, Mr. Sumeragi, and ever since then, Midori has been plagued by this demon. It throws things, knocks furniture over, and it gets worse each time! I'm afraid that eventually she will be hurt or killed!" Impulsively, the old lady reached out and touched the back of Subaru's gloved hand. "Please, you must find some way to help her! She's all I have left of Keiji..."

"Mrs. Kimura..." Subaru's heart went out to this woman, who had seen too many of her family die young.

"I'll do my very best!" he promised her.

Subaru set down the teacup.

"May I see her?"

Mrs. Kimura nodded.

"All right," she said, getting up. "It's this way."

She lead Subaru down a short hall and knocked on a door.

"Midori, the onmyouji I told you about is here."

"It's all right, Mother, if you'd like him to come in."

The girl's bedroom was Western-style, like the rest of the apartment, except for the empty space where the futon would be set out at night. Subaru noticed a few masculine things, such as a gold watch on the dressing table and a rack of ties, that told him the dead man had shared this room with his wife.

Midori Kimura was very beautiful, with a light complexion and delicate bone structure that gave her face a refined look. Her eyes were wide, veiled by long lashes, and reddened from crying. A handkerchief was crumpled between her long, slim fingers.

"I want to help you, Midori-san," Subaru told her gently.

"Go away!" she told him sharply, her voice filled with such bitterness and despair that Subaru jerked his head back in surprise. "I don't believe in your magic, and I don't want your help!" He started to turn away, but she held out her hand, suddenly apologetic. "Oh, please, no...I'm so sorry, I promised Mother that I would let you try, and she has been so kind to me..."

The elder Mrs. Kimura glanced at Subaru. He nodded, and she left the room.

"I'm going to try and see if I can sense what is causing the trouble," Subaru told Midori. "Would you sit down, please?"

She gratefully sank into the dressing-table chair.

Subaru closed his eyes and began to chant an incantation, attuning himself to the aura of the room. If a spirit had been active, he could have sensed it immediately, but such things could also hide, lurking out of sight...or, as Hokuto had suggested, the cause might be something else entirely. Steadily, he could feel his inner "eye" opening to all of the psychic influences that had recently acted on the room and the girl.

He gasped, shocked out of his trance by what he felt: sorrow, hatred aimed at Midori, rage, and something else beyond the pure emotional force, the definite presence of a ghostly being. Subaru could feel it there, surrounding the young widow. It wasn't hiding, not really; it was more like it was asleep, as if it was resting, gathering its strength for its next appearance.

Then, like a light sleeper awakened by the step of someone passing by their room, it came to full conciousness at the touch of Subaru's mind.

He could feel it in the room now without benefit of special spells or incantations; the blazing hate surrounding the invisible form was unmistakable. Though the spirit itself was unseen, its presence was not. A picture frame shattered. The watch flew across the room, striking the wall. A hairbrush just missed Subaru's head.

Midori screamed.

Acting quickly, Subaru began chanting out a spell to bind the spirit, to entrap in in a form he could deal with directly rather than this incorporeal, intangible presence. As if it could sense what he was trying to do, its energy shattered the mirror, crushing it into a hundred small, sharp slivers of glass, which sailed through the air in a deadly arc. Subaru flung himself out of the way of the glittering stream, avoiding most of the damage, but his cheek was cut by one of the flying shards. The stream of glass whirled in the air, then gathered in a cloud and exploded outwards. The slivers tore at Subaru's clothes, but most were not directed at him but at Midori. Dozens of the little knives embedded themselves in the carpet and table around her, but she was not scratched. A heavy book leapt off a shelf and flung itself at her, missing by only inches.

_This is getting dangerous!_ thought Subaru. _I have to work fast!_

He began to chant again, quickly, gathering power. There was nothing complex in this spell, just quick and dirty action. Pulling out a charm marked with cabalistic signs, he held it up as he finished the spell. The charm burst into intense blue flame, and Subaru threw it into the center of the room, where it exploded into brilliant light.

Sighing, he dropped to his knees. The poltergeist was gone, for now. Fortunately, it had only been a weak spirit, and relatively easy to repulse; only the suddenness and violence of its reaction had put Subaru on the defensive. Now, though, it was out of reach, and he could not work a proper exorcism upon it.

Midori was crying into her hands with harsh, wracking sobs.

"Midori-san, it's all right!" Subaru exclaimed. "It's gone."

"Oh, why did you do it?" she wailed. "Why did you drive it away?"

"Midori-san..."

She looked up at Subaru with despairing eyes.

"Don't you understand? It's all my fault! It's a punishment for me! I should never have taken him away from Ayaka...It would never have happened!"

She began to weep again.

"Oh, Subaru, why didn't you just let it kill me?"


	2. Chapter 2

"She actually said that it was her fault?" Hokuto asked, stealingSeishiro's french fries and munching happily.

Subaru nodded sadly.

They were eating lunch in Seishiro's animal hospital in Shinjuku (McDonald's, of course, which was what happened when they let Hokuto get take-out), but Subaru didn't feel much like eating. The image of Midori Kimura's despair-wracked face kept floating before his eyes.

"Do you know what she meant?"

"I asked Mrs. Kimura about her grandson's death. It seems that it was a traffic accident. Midori-san was driving and lost control of the car. I'm sure she blames herself."

"Survivor guilt..." Hokuto mused.

"It's a terrible thing," Subaru agreed. "Her grief alone is painful enough without taking the extra burden of guilt on herself."

Seishiro sipped at his strawberry milkshake.

"Is she?" he asked. Then, he added, "Who is Ayaka?"

Subaru glanced away, slightly embarrassed at this part of the story.

"Keiji Kimura and Ayaka Sato had, apparently, been in love for many years, ever since high school. All of their friends had expected them to marry someday, but when Mr. Kimura met Midori-san at Ueno Park last summer, it was love at first sight."

"How romantic!" Hokuto gushed.

"Yes, but Miss Sato was completely forgotten."

"Oh, that's so sad," murmured Hokuto. "It's like a tragic play, where the lovers are foreordained to eternal separation." Subaru wasn't quite sure which pair of lovers his sister was talking about.

"Mrs. Kimura seems to have been very forthright about her grandson's romantic past, Subaru-kun."

Subaru nodded.

"I think that perhaps she does not like Miss Sato very much."

"So, a widow who believes she deserves to be punished for her husband's death, a grandmother-in-law who wants to protect that widow, a scorned lover, and an angry ghost. Quite a fascinating case!" Seishiro summed up.

"I put a barrier up around the apartment," Subaru explained, "which should keep the poltergeist from coming back for some time, but I'm not sure how long it will hold. The spirit is steadily getting stronger and stronger, and Midori-san is not helping things with her guilt. It keeps calling the poltergeist to her."

"You'll have to lay a trap for the poltergeist next time," Seishiro suggested.

Subaru nodded.

"I don't think that it is strong enough yet to be a real threat to someone who can use magic, but it is very fast, and hard to focus on."

Frowning, Hokuto wondered, "What makes a strange ghost like that?" The question distracted her interest long enough for Seishiro to rescue his last few fries. "It would make more sense if it really was just Midori's own mind trying to punish herself."

"That would be an elegant solution," Seishiro admitted, "but too often the world does not like elegance or simplicity. The interaction of people is like a beautiful arabesque, with a thousand turns holding a thousand secrets."

"Sei-chan..."

"Secrets..." said Subaru, mostly thinking out loud. "A person's hatred is a terrible thing. It can create a spirit all by itself, a spirit that wants to seek out the object of the hatred...

"And Midori-san hates herself..."

Then he looked at Seishiro, and thought again.

It was not, Subaru decided, that simple.

-X X X-

Sergeant Nabuo Hironaga glanced back and forth from the letter in his hand to the handsome, almost pretty young man who held his broad-brimmed hat between gloved fingers. Hironaga was not used to people who came bearing letters of introduction from high government officials; he worked in the Traffic division, of all things. That sort of political intervention usually came in cases handled by Homicide, or Vice. It did Hironaga some good to see that the young man was no more comfortable about it than he was.

"Well, Mr. Sumeragi, what is it that I can do for you?"

"I'm sorry to bother you, Sergeant," Subaru apologized. The Sumeragi family was on better terms with -- and was owed more favors by -- government ministers and captains of industry than ordinary people. The person Subaru had asked for help was of much higher rank than the situation called for, but he simply did not know anyone to approach at a more appropriate level. It made him very embarassed. "I just need to see an accident report. It happened eight days ago; the car owner's name was Keiji Kimura."

"That's all?" Hironaga looked at Subaru in surprise. The young man blushed faintly and looked down at the floor.

"That's all," he confirmed.

The sergeant began to go through the computer records, shaking his head at the curious behavior of the powerful and influential. In a few moments he had located the correct file, a few more and he was handing a printed copy to Subaru.

"There you go; knock yourself out."

"Thank you," the young man acknowledged with a slight bow.

Hironaga again shook his head in confusion as Subaru left. Sometimes, he thought, this job was just too weird.

-X X X-

Hokuto tapped her foot impatiently. Ayaka Sato was taking a long time to get to the door.

"Oh, Sei-chan, if she's not home..."

"Her lights were on," Seishiro pointed out reasonably.

A moment later came the sharp snick of the door latch being turned. Hokuto's impatience caught in her throat when she saw the reason for Ayaka's delay. The woman was in her early twenties, a bit taller than Hokuto, and very beautiful, but there was a harshness about her face that made it appear all lines and angles. She leaned heavily on a crutch; her right leg was twisted savagely as if it had been broken in several places and allowed to heal without setting. The foot of that leg did not reach the floor.

"Who are you? What do you want?" she snapped in a harsh voice. Her eyes raked up and down Hokuto scornfully, seeing the green shamrock dress and dismissing it along with its wearer.

"Miss Sato, we're..." Hokuto began haltingly, fighting down the flash of annoyance she had felt.

"We're friends of Midori Kimura," Seishiro smoothly cut in.

The effect of this simple statement was immediate and astounding. Ayaka's face twisted with hatred and grief; her eyes narrowed to slits. Her words weren't just speech; they were attacks.

"That bitch!" she snarled. "How dare you come here now? She went all-out after Keiji, fawning all over him, offering him everything. She stole him away from me like she thought he was some toy she could possess! Well, now she has him, the cold ashes of his corpse! Ashes in a grave where she put him!" Tears were streaming from her eyes as she whirled away from her callers. The door echoed hollowly as it slammed.

Hokuto felt vaguely nauseous. Part of her wanted to curl up and cry; Ayaka's pain was like an open, festering sore. The depth of Miss Sato's passion must have approached insanity, for her to have burst into that kind of explosion to complete strangers at the mere mention of Midori Kimura's name. Another part of Hokuto wanted to try to comfort the young woman, to help heal some of that anguish. To lose Keiji so quickly, and then to have him die so soon after that...

Then, of course, there was the part of Hokuto that was just plain mad.

"Well, that was certainly fascinating," Seishiro commented while Hokuto was struggling to sort out her feelings. He led the way out of the apartment building and into the warm afternoon air. A tinge of rain could be scented on the wind, and the skies over Tokyo were turning the same gray as the steel of the towering skyscrapers. Seishiro tapped a cigarette out of its pack and lit it, exhaling a long, thin stream of smoke from between his lips, the looked again at the uncharacteristically silent Hokuto.

"Do you know, Hokuto-chan," he told her, "that you look just like your twin when you're pensive like that? It's very becoming."

"Sei-chan..." she whispered, biting her lip.

"What did you think of her?"

"What did I...?"

Seishiro slipped his glasses off. It was funny, Hokuto thought, how much that could change someone's appearance. Without the veil of glass over them, Seishiro's eyes seemed so much more intense, deep, liquid, and fathomless. He seemed a completely different creature now, no longer the calm, reserved friend but something wild and unknown.

_ S E I - C H A N W A Z E T T A I N I C H I G A U _

"What did you think of Ayaka, Hokuto-chan?" he asked. He held the cigarette in the same hand that held his folded glasses; a thin stream of smoke trailed straight upwards like a narrow column. "Subaru-kun's gentleness hides things from him, sometimes. There is no evil in him,

making it very difficult for him to see evil in others. Your vision is clearer."

Hokuto could not look away. She stared into Seishiro's eyes, entranced, captured by them.

"I..."

"What do you believe, Hokuto-chan?"

Hokuto tried to think. She was unsure enough as it was, and this strange new Seishiro did not help her.

Or, did he?

As she stared into his eyes, she could feel time slowing. Images of Ayaka Sato's face arranged themselves in her mind.

"Anger..." she whispered. "She loathes Midori beyond reason..." The first image, and the easiest.

"And?"

"Pain...she misses Keiji...she wants him back, and knows that because he is dead she cannot ever have the only thing that matters to her..."

"So she blames Midori for it?"

"Yes...no..." Hokuto shook her head. "She feels guilty about it. She blames herself."

Seishiro half-turned away from her. A misty drizzle began to fall, tiny droplets lightly striking Hokuto's face.

"Sei-chan..."

He slid his glasses back on, and turned a dazzling smile on her.

"What is it, Hokuto-chan?"

Hokuto blinked.

Had she been saying something?

"We'd better get going," Seishiro suggested aimably. "Subaru-kun will be waiting for us to pick him up."

They darted across the street, hoping to get into the car before the rain picked up.

"I wonder what Keiji Kimura was like?" Hokuto said. "Do you think that he was a good man?"

"His death made three women's lives stop moving forward, because of their love for him," was Seishiro's enigmatic response.

Hokuto had no answer for that.

-X X X-

"Are you sure that this isn't any trouble?" Subaru asked for the third time. "You've spent your entire day doing things on my behalf. I feel badly about taking you away from your own important work."

Seishiro neatly guided the car around a turn.

"Please don't worry about it."

He turned the warmth of his smile on Subaru.

"It's a pleasure to do things for those we love."

"U-um..."

"Besides which, it's 5:30 now..."

Subaru glanced at the dashboard clock. The hours were passing quickly today, he thought to himself.

"...so it's no trouble at all."

The rain had picked up, denying the morning's promise of a clear day.

"Your work involves human lives in any case, Subaru-kun."

Seishiro glanced at his young passenger.

"Shouldn't a human life mean more than an animal's?" he asked.

"Your work is important, too!" Subaru protested at once. "People care very much for their pets. Without you, animals would die, and that would make people very sad. Animals love unconditionally, without doubts or reservations. That's very rare to find!"

"Except in you."

"Seishiro-san..."

The car rounded another turn. They were on the outskirts of Tokyo now, moving through the suburban areas. Subaru rarely got to see places like this in the course of his work, with grassy slopes and small stands of trees mingling with the houses, since his life usually played itself out in the urban center of Tokyo.

"We're almost to the place where the accident happened," Seishiro told him.

"You know Tokyo very well, don't you, Seishiro-san? So much of it is still a mystery to me."

"I don't think one can truly appreciate something until one knows its inner heart. If you say you love a mysterious thing, you really love what your own imagination pictures as the truth."

Subaru wondered about that. Did that mean his liking for Tokyo was only an illusion?

The car made a right-hand turn onto a long strip of road. Just outside Subaru's door, a grassy embankment plunged sharply down over thirty feet towards the back side of a shopping center, separated from the road by a narrow guardrail.

"This is the place, according to what you told me," Seishiro said, "along this stretch."

"It looks very dangerous," Subaru commented.

"It isn't difficult to drive," Seishiro clarified, "but a loss of control could very easily be fatal. Plunging through the guardrail...rolling down the hill...one would have to be very lucky to survive. Like your Midori-san."

The police accident report had told Subaru that the Kimuras' accident had not been caused by mechanical failure; there had been nothing whatsoever wrong with the car before it had gone out of control. The road conditions had been perfect also. That was hard on Midori, because it gave her no way to blunt her guilt, no explanation other than her own error available to console her.

Suddenly, the world went crazy. The car fishtailed, skiddingwildly across the road. It spun three hundred and sixty degrees, careening back and forth wildly. It was a miracle that there were no other cars on the road, yet it had to end badly sooner or later. Subaru's heart caught in his throat. Was this how Keiji had felt, knowing his life was in mortal danger, knowing there was nothing he could do to protect himself? There was a connection there, between the boy and the dead man.

Subaru could feel it...

...the connection spanning the border between life and death...

...and he understood.

The keening shriek of an eagle went unnoticed.

The car slowed.

Stopped.

"Subaru-kun."

Seishiro's arms enfolded him. Subaru made no protest; it was only natural to seek comfort from others after coming that close to death.

He turned his head upwards to look at the older man. Subaru's eyes were wide, his face open and pure with concern, not for himself, but for others.

Seishiro's smile was brilliant.

Dazzling.

"Seishiro-san...I...Midori-san, she --"

"Needs you."

Seishiro reached out and brushed a bit of Subaru's hair, a lock jostled out of place by the wild ride, back where it belonged.

"I understand."


	3. Chapter 3

Night had fallen over Tokyo. Without the sun's rays, the light in Midori Kimura's bedroom was eerie and shifting, cast only by six tall, slender white candles placed at the corners of a hexagram, the six-pointed Star of David within a circle. On one side of the magical circle knelt Subaru Sumeragi, his attitude almost prayerful as he chanted softly. Opposite him Midori waited, also kneeling, her lack of faith and her fear obvious in her expression.

She was not the only worried one. Subaru had told Midori that he thought her troubles could be solved tonight, and he was wondering whether he could make good on his promise. He had not meant only the exorcism of the haunting spirit, but some kind of resolution to her deeper problems.

He was sure that it was possible.

He had to be right.

Because lives depended on it.

What worried Subaru was that even if his beliefs were correct, that would not in and of itself be enough. The outcome would still depend on his skills?

What if they were not enough?

He had been casting the spell for over an hour; now, he stopped chanting and raised his head.

Subaru could sense the barrier that he had set up around the room earlier in the day. It was battered and frayed, almost gone, eaten away by the spirit from the outside, devoured from within by Midori's guilt and desire not to be protected. Now, Subaru brought it down entirely.

The poltergeist came raging into the room, its anger modified by its time spent forcibly away from its victim. The window cracked, the blinds rattled, small objects shook wherever they sat. The explosion of swirling death was about to come.

Subaru defiantly snapped out one word.

The hexagram blazed into light. The candle flames lashed upwards, becoming bars of fire reaching to the ceiling. A wordless howl filled the room, but the shaking subsided; objects settled harmlessly back into their places.

Subaru's prison was working. By setting it in advance, he had been able to overcome the poltergeist's intangible nature that made it nearly impossible to sense and confront it. It was a relatively weak spirit; he thought that he could hold it like this for some time.

Enough time?

Immediately, Subaru began intoning his next spell, one he had used in many other circumstances, to banish the spirit's threatening nature and allow him to reach the person beneath. So often, ghosts returned in forms like this one that reflected their purpose in returning to the living world but not their complete identity, forms that drowned out their true selves.

The narrow colums of fire began to tremble. The poltergeist was trying to fight its way past the seal. There was a shimmer in the air, though; Subaru's incantation was beginning to strip away the ghost's invisibility and intangibility. The shimmer grew, taking on form and color.

The circle's light began to fade.

The transluscent image of a slender man took shape.

The candle flames guttered out.

"Keiji!" Midori screamed.

"Kimura-san."

"Midori? What...what is this?"

Midori buried her face in her hands, weeping.

"Oh, it's true," she sobbed out. "He despises me now. Just as I thought, his spirit has come back to revenge itself on me. Oh, Keiji..."

"But that's not true, Midori-san!" protested Subaru. "Please, tell her , Keiji-san!"

The shadowy form of Keiji Kimura knelt next to his wife.

"Midori, how can you think that?" he said. "I could never hate you."

"Then why are you haunting me?" Midori asked, her voice choked with sobs.

"You called him to you," Subaru explained softly.

Comprehension shone in Keiji's face.

"Yes...I...I remember feeling the injustice of my death, wanting to punish my killer, sensing her guilt..." The outline of his form began to shimmer and break up; as he focused on his emotions he was beginning to revert to the poltergeist.

"You were confused," Subaru quickly put in to head off the transformation, "by Midori-san's feelings. Her love for you was so great, and her pain at losing you so deep, that she believed that your death was her fault. It was her guilt that you sensed, her false beliefs that brought you here."

For the first time, Subaru thought he saw hope in Midori's eyes.

"How can you say that?" Midori pleaded with him. "How can you be sure?"

Subaru touched the small bandage on his cheek that covered where the shard of flying glass had cut him.

"He refused to hurt you, Midori-san."

It really was that simple.

"No matter how clouded his reason was by the nature of the poltergeist, no matter how much your guilt drove him on, he would not harm you. A ghost driven by revenge could not hold back from attacking its killer."

"Then someone else is responsible!" Keiji suddenly reasoned, and once again his image began to shimmer as he rose to his feet.

"No!" Subaru and Midori shouted as one, not denying his statement but his intentions.

"Please, Keiji, don't!"

"Don't do this thing!"

"But..."

"Please, Keiji-san. Your wife loved you as a kind and honest man. Don't make here remember you as a killer."

Keiji turned to Midori, who rose to face him.

"Subaru is right, dearest. This hatred isn't the man I knew..."

"I..."

He put his arms around the beautiful young woman.

"You are right, both of you." He looked at Subaru. "Thank you, young man, for helping me to find myself when I was lost." Turning back to Midori, he concluded, "And thank you, Midori, for letting me love you for the short time we had together..."

He was fading again, but without the shimmer; he was not transforming, but only going away. Without the craving for revenge, nothing was left to bind Keiji's soul in this world.

"I love you so much, Keiji."

"I wish that I could stay and protect you, Midori..."

Keiji smiled; he had nearly faded away.

"Be happy..."

Then, he was gone.

Midori had begun to cry again, tears streaming freely from her eyes.

This time, though, she was smiling.

Subaru was smiling too.

-X X X-

Ayaka Sato was gritting her teeth as she pulled herself into the center of the room. She wasn't used to getting about on one leg yet, but then, she had no reason to go anywhere.

Certainly, she was absolutely not going out this evening.

Her eyes flickered around the main room of her small apartment. Doors and windows were sealed with parchment strips marked with cabalistic symbols; similar strips were placed on the walls at regular points. She was as ready as she could be.

It was still going to hurt.

A shadow caught the corner of her eye. Ayaka snapped her head around.

"You!"

"Well," Seishiro commented amiably, "as I thought, you're not a complete amateur."

"How did you get in here?" Ayaka spat at him.

Seishiro ignored her question.

"Your spell was badly miscast, of course. I sensed it at once, the moment it struck. So did Subaru-kun; he knew at once that you caused Midori's car to crash." He chuckled softly. "Of course, Subaru-kun was far more interested in freeing poor Midori and Keiji from their little tragedy than in punishing you for your crime. He'll be here soon, though. The Sumeragi clan is, after all, responsible for protecting Japan from those who kill using magic."

He slipped off his glasses.

"It would be interesting to see what he decides to do with you."

"Damn you!" Ayaka swung the tip of her crutch at Seishiro's head, but he stepped out of the way with negligent ease. Off-balance, she tumbled to the carpet.

"Still, I really don't think he should be forced to choose between killing you and letting a murderer go. It's far too harsh a choice for a young man to face."

Ayaka got to her knees, her mouth twisted into a feral, snarling expression.

"I see that you know enough to prepare for the backlash from your spell." His eyes took in the various protections designed to stave off that force. "A spell full of so many mistakes, of lethal power, must create a tremendous reaction. Far too much for such weak wards. I noticed right away, of course, that your crutch was new."

Seishiro smiled, a very different expression than his usual kind look.

"Hokuto-chan would call it poetic justice, I think."

A rustle behind her made Ayaka turn her head. With mounting horror, she saw the slip of parchment with her protective charm sealing the door flutter down to the floor. Looking around the room, she saw the other seven charms falling away as well.

Leaving her defenseless.

She looked for Seishiro, but he was no longer there.

When the end came, Ayaka was wrapped in a fetal position, weeping not from regret, but for lost opportunities.

-X X X-

"So when I got there, she was already dead. The backlash from the spell she cast this afternoon had killed her." Subaru sighed glumly. "Perhaps it is for the best, but I wish that there was something I could have done for her."

Hokuto, perched on the edge of the table, shook her head.

"You never met her, Subaru. I don't think that she was sane."

Seishiro nodded. He was busy at the stove, working on the trio's late dinner ("After all," Hokuto had said, "if you're going to marry Subaru, you'll need all the practice at cooking you can get, Sei-chan!").

"I think that Hokuto-chan is right. Miss Sato had no reason to believe that we suspected her of anything, and yet she tried to kill us."

"She didn't even realize that I wasn't with Sei-chan anymore when her spell finally caught up to him! I think," Hokuto added, "that it was the pain of knowing that she was responsible for Keiji's death that caused it."

She tapped her finger against her lip.

"Then again, maybe not. She was certainly much less sorry about it than Midori was."

"Her grief was weak enough that a vengeful ghost was decoyed away from her," Subaru mused. "I doubt we'll ever really know what drove her over the edge."

Hokuto nodded in agreement.

Seishiro turned off the stove and began dishing out the yakisoba he had been preparing.

"There's one thing that I don't quite understand," Hokuto said, swinging her legs idly.

"What's that?"

"Well, Ayaka originally wanted to kill Midori in revenge for 'stealing' Keiji from her, right, Subaru?"

"That's right," her brother agreed before tasting his first bite. "Seishiro-san, this is really good!"

"Oh, do you think so? I'm really not very good; simple dishes are all that I can make," Seishiro accepted the compliment graciously.

Hokuto got down off the table, making room so that Seishiro didn't have to eat while standing up.

"Well, what I don't see is why she tried a method of murder that was as likely to kill the passenger in the car as Midori."

Subaru thought about that for a moment. It was odd, he reflected, how he had gone through this entire case without ever meeting the one who had been ultimately responsible. He wondered if that affected his perspective, made him miss things going on under the surface.

"I'm not really sure, Hokuto-chan. Ayaka certainly wasn't a very talented onmyouji. She was just an angry girl who had read a few books. She might not have known anything else to try. Or, she might have wanted to create an accident, instead of an obviously unusual death. She couldn't hope to win Keiji-san back," Subaru reasoned, "if he thought--regardless of what legal action might be possible--that she might have been involved with Midori-san's death."

"That's quite good thinking, Subaru-kun," Seishiro commented. "There's something else, though, I think."

"What?" Hokuto asked eagerly. "Don't keep us in suspense, Sei-chan!"

"Stupidity. Or perhaps arrogance would would be a better way to express it."

Hokuto didn't understand and had no qualms about saying so.

"She cast her spell so that it would make a particular person's car lose control whenever that person drove near to a dangerous area," Seishiro explained between mouthfuls. "It made Midori's car crash and would have done the same thing to Subaru and me if it hadn't been an easy spell for even a modest practitioner to break."

"So how does that make her stupid?"

"I'd think that a defender of womanhood like yourself would get it at once," he teased.

"Ohhh, Sei-chan! Tell me!"

Seishiro chuckled softly.

"Oh, all right, but only because it would be mean to keep teasing my future big sister-in-law."

Subaru dropped his eyes to his plate. Really, he thought, those two were incorrigible!

"It never occurred to her that Keiji would let his wife drive him anywhere."

"That's right!" Hokuto exclaimed. "In a mixed party, it's expected that the man will drive!" She cackled. "What a poor example of womanhood, to have her plans fail because she underestimated her own sex!"

"People in love often don't think clearly," Seishiro said.

He smiled again, that slight curve of the lips that made him look as if he knew a secret that no one else did.

"That's why all of the great love stories are tragedies."

"Seishiro-san..."

"Subaru!" chided Hokuto. "Don't just stare at Sei-chan; your noodles are getting cold!"


End file.
